ABOUT THE FUTURE/S COMMUNITY
Future/s brings together experts from diverse fields for a radical discussion about the future.
We are an expanding international community of “futures practitioners” that have met, presented and worked together on different project stemming from the Utopia Association, Festival & Designing Tomorrow events and the re:publica conference (Berlin).
Our end-goal is to establish a think tank group at the intersection of technology, creativity and policy, allowing for research, consultancy, art and public advocacy. We aim to challenge existing narratives by (re)imagining, formulating, and shaping alternative and radical perspectives, visions and stories about the future.
HOW DID FUTURE/S COME TO BE
The purpose of the FUTURE/S think tank and our series of ongoing workshops and collaborations is to move the discussion about the future from the realms of isolated, one-off, didactic discussions and presentations into more communicative, distributed, ongoing efforts and with readily available outputs that emanate from the same space – short stories, graphics, policy papers, scholarly work etc.
This evolved directly from our understanding that the future should be something we do and think about together, that it is a practice (we encourage the use of “futures practitioner”) that requires ongoing attention, education and refinement and that we must learn and engage with different futures together, retaining/regaining agency, not relegating it to algorithms of prediction and control.
THE FUTURE/S HANDBOOK
HOW TO CANCEL THE APOCALYPSE AND DESIGN DESIRABLE FUTURES
We are currently working on A Future(s) Handbook and looking for grant funding and partnerships to allow for editing, publication, marketing, distribution in both physical and digital formats, as well as launch events and workshops that will explore, expand and propagate the Handbook ideas.
We have taken the first step towards the Handbook, gathering 25 creatives and story-tellers, scholars and entrepreneurs for a focused retreat, where we studied and engaged with one another’s disciplines, insights, and hopes and fears about the future, utilizing science fiction story-telling, future scenario building and design thinking methodologies.
The Future(s) Handbook is a collaborative effort that will include policy, scholarly work, design, stories, media and art that stem from that retreat, will encapsulate the groups’ raison d’etre, present methodologies alongside case-studies and allow us and others a way to further the conversation and set out towards different desirable futures.
Why a Future/s Handbook?
In the past few years our group had spawned and inspired different projects and events, as well as several methodologies, approaches and concepts of designing future scenario-building.
Our aim is to share these experiences and methods in a format that allows others to work with them and adapt them for their working contexts. We also wish to share back to the communities who have actively contributed to Future/s and that members of our group are part of.
Most of all we want to enable radical and open minded thinking about the future and create agency – we do not live in a predetermined world, powerless to shape what’s coming but that we have the ability to imagine positive futures in order to actually build the world we want to live in.
Fiction / Fact / Fiction / Fact / The content of this book crosses boundaries by combining different genres: We have collected, worked with and refined different methodologies and written them up as hands-on guidelines of how to design (desirable) futures. These methodologies and the case studies of their use are at the core of the handbook. In order for us to open our minds and imagine the future as we want it, this publication also includes science fiction short stories, academic essays, graphic and design contribution.